The following are excerpts from an article by historian and professor
Edmund Morgan published in1972. In the article, Morgan discusses the relationship between
the rise of slavery and the rise ofdemocracy in the colonial Chesapeake. As you read, notice
what factors Morgan highlights as leadingto the rise of racial slavery in the Chesapeake. And, think
about how the conditions of the Chesapeakeregion during colonial times could have simultaneously given rise
to both slavery and democracy.

American historians interested in tracing the rise of liberty, democracy,
and the common man
have been challenged in the past two decades by other historians, interested
in tracing the history of
oppression, exploitation, and racism. The challenge... made us examine
more directly than historians
hitherto have been willing to do, the role of slavery in our early
history. Colonial historians, in
particular, when writing about the origin and development of American
institutions have found it
possible until recently to deal with slavery as an exception to everything
they had to say...We owe a
debt of gratitude to those who have insisted that slavery was something
more than an exception, that
one fifth of the American population at the time of the Revolution
is too many people to be treated as
an exception.

We shall not have met the challenge simply by studying the history
of that one fifth, fruitful
as such studies may be, urgent as they may be. Nor shall we have met
the challenge if we merely
execute the familiar maneuver of turning our old interpretations on
their heads. The temptation is
already apparent to argue that slavery and oppression were the dominant
features of American history
and that efforts to advance liberty and equality were the exception,
indeed no more than a device to
divert the masses while their chains were being fastened. To dismiss
the rise of liberty and equality in
American history as a mere sham is not only to ignore hard facts, it
is also to evade the problem
presented by those facts. The rise of liberty and equality in this
country was accompanied by the rise of
slavery. That two such contradictory developments were taking place
simultaneously over a long
period of history, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth,
is the central paradox of American
history.

The challenge, for a colonial historian at least, is to explain how
a people could have
developed the dedication to human liberty and dignity exhibited by
the leaders of the American
Revolution and at the same time have developed and maintained a system
of labor that denied human
liberty and dignity every hour of the day...

It has been tempting to dismiss Jefferson and the whole Virginia dynasty
as hypocrites. But to
do so is to deprive the term ¤hypocrisyË of useful meaning. If hypocrisy
means, as I think it does,
deliberately to affirm a principle without believing it, then hypocrisy
requires a rare quality of mind
combined with an unscrupulous intention to deceive. To attribute such
an intention, even to attribute such
clarity of mind in the matter, to Jefferson, Madison, or Washington
is to once again evade the
challenge. What we need to explain is how such men could have arrived
at beliefs and actions so full of
contradiction...

Put the challenge another way: how did England, a country priding itself
on the liberty of its
citizens, produce colonies where most of the inhabitants enjoyed still
greater liberty, greater
opportunities, greater control over their own lives than most men in
the mother country, while the
remainder, one fifth of the total, were deprived of virtually all liberty,
all opportunities, all control
over their own lives? We may admit that the Englishmen who colonized
America and their
revolutionary descendants were racists, that consciously or unconsciously
they believed liberties and
rights should be confined to persons of light complexion. When we have
said as much, even when we
have probed the depths of racial prejudice, we will not have fully
accounted for the paradox. Racism
was certainly an essential element in it, but I should like to suggest
another element, that I believe to
have influenced the development of both slavery and freedom as we have
known them in the United
States...

One development was crucial, and that was the appearance in Virginia
of a growing number of
freemen who had served their terms but who were now unable to afford
land of their own except on the
frontiers... By 1676 it was estimated that one fourth of Virginia╠s
freemen were without land of their
own... The presence of this growing class of poverty-stricken Virginians
was not a little frightening to
the planters who had made it to the top...They wanted the [indentured
servant] immigrants who kept
pouring in every year. Indeed, they needed them...but as more [indentured
servants] turned free every
year Virginia seemed to have inherited the problem that she was helping
England to solve. Virginia,
complained...[the] secretary of the colony, was ¤a sinke to drayen
England of her filth and scum.Ë

The men who worried the uppercrust looked even more dangerous in Virginia
than they had in
England. They were, to begin with, young...and the young have always
seemed impatient of control by
their elders and superiors, if not downright rebellious. They were
also predominantly single
men...Finally, what made these wild young men particularly dangerous
was that they were armed and
had to be armed...

Virginia╠s poor had reason to be envious and angry and against the men
who owned the land
and imported the servants and ran the government... The nervousness
of those who had property worth
plundering continued throughout the century... [One solution] was to
extend the terms of service for
servants entering the colony... but [as] the ranks of freedmen grew,
so did poverty and discontent...[But,
there was a] solution which allowed Virginia╠s magnates to keep their
lands, yet arrested the
discontent and the repression of other Englishmen [living in Virginia]...
the rights of Englishmen were
preserved by destroying the rights of Africans.

Slaves could be deprived of the opportunity for association and rebellion.
They could be kept
unarmed and unorganized... And since color disclosed their probable
status, the rest of society could
keep close watch on them...

[The freedman] was no longer a man to be feared. This fact, together
with the presence of a
growing mass of alien slaves, tended to draw the white settlers closer
together and to reduce the
importance of class difference between yeoman farmer and large plantation
owner.